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Developer Breaks Ground on Downtown JW Marriott

Friday, May 17, 2013

Add another luxury hotel to the plans for Downtown.

The 102-year-old Samuel F. Carter Building at 806 Main has been gutted as crews work to transform it into a 323-room JW Marriott.

Pearl Hospitality is spending $80.8 million to develop the new luxury hotel at the corner of Rusk and Main streets in the center of Downtown. The hotel will include a full-service restaurant, bar, spa, health club, executive lounge, swimming pool and 10,000 square feet of meeting space.

The hotel is slated to open in spring of 2014. The project is being financed partly through a public/private partnership with the city of Houston.

Local officials, including Mayor Annise Parker, participated in a groundbreaking ceremony on May 17.

The Carter building is hailed as one of the city's architectural gems, but had fallen into disrepair in recent years. When it was first constructed, it was the tallest building in Houston.

"A lot of people right now are looking at Downtown and saying ‘we want to build,'" Mayor Parker said at the groundbreaking. "I appreciate the fact that there are folks who were willing to look at this building, see past its shabby state, and instead see its potential. When we restore a building like this, we take a piece of history and give it to the future."

Downtown's hotel landscape is seeing more and more action. Work began last month on a $10 million renovation of the historic Lancaster Houston Hotel. Completion of that project is slated for mid-summer, bringing a fresh look to the 93-room boutique property. A few blocks south, the longstanding Humble Oil Building complex at Main Street and Dallas is getting a new 166-room SpringHill Suites hotel. The complex is already home to a 191-room Courtyard and 171-room Residence Inn. Construction on that project is slated for completion in mid-2015. And in December, RIDA Development Corp. and Houston First announced plans for a new 1,000-room Marriott Marquis that will rise adjacent to the GRB Convention Center. The massive hotel will join the Hilton Americas Houston as the city's second convention center hotel, dramatically increasing Houston's ability to host major conventions. Construction on that property is scheduled to begin in 2014 with completion in spring 2016.